This case study assesses the efficacy of the Environmental Stewardship scheme in England to drive changes in national farmland bird populations over the period 2002-2010. It tests for associations between environmental stewardship management options, grouped into categories reflecting intended biological effects (e.g. the presence of stubble, or straw that remains after grains have been harvested) and species’ population growth rates, wherever benefits of management might be expected to occur.
It finds strong evidence for positive effects of management that provides winter food resources (i.e. stubble and wild bird seed crops) on population growth rates across multiple granivorous species, which is the first evidence for landscape-scale responses of biodiversity to agri-environment scheme management. The results for management aiming to provide breeding season benefits (i.e. grassland, field margin and boundary management) showed mixed patterns of positive and negative associations.
Overall, this study demonstrates that agri-environment scheme management has the potential to have national-scale effects on avian population growth rates, although the results suggest that some components of the scheme have had little effect on bird populations. Therefore, while this study provides the first proof-of-concept for broad and shallow scheme impacts on biodiversity, the results underline the importance of targeting towards population-limiting factors such as winter food resources.
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